We have more TV channels than ever before, yet TV has less variety than it had when there were only three or four channels. One of the pleasures of old TV was its variety. A programme didn't have to appeal to everybody. There was room for niche interests and programmes that were made simply because somebody thought the subject was interesting. YouTube has revived that format.
In the 1960s and 1970s, you could find almost anything on TV. A comedy would be followed by a documentary, then a serious interview, then a drama, then a music programme, then a quiz show; or some eccentric programme about railways, wildlife or local history. TV back then had a sense of unpredictability. You never quite knew what you were going to see next.
Today there are hundreds of channels, but the programmes fall into a small number of categories: reality TV, property programmes, cooking shows, celebrity shows, crime dramas and quizzes. Even the same film titles appear on several different channels within the same week, and most of them starring either Steven Seagal or Jean-Claude Van Damme.
At first glance, YouTube seems to represent the complete opposite of old TV, with much of its content produced by individuals rather than TV companies. Yet when you watch YouTube on a modern Smart TV, it feels like old TV again. YouTube has recreated the old TV experience by getting rid of the modern TV schedule.
You can watch a documentary about an obscure railway line, then watch an old interview with an actor, then a music performance by Leonard Cohen from 1972, followed by somebody explaining how an LCD display works. It is wonderfully random.
YouTube has also revived the old TV chat show. Back in the day, interviewers like Michael Parkinson or Dick Cavett would have long and in-depth conversations with their guests. The interview itself was the entertainment, rather than simply being an opportunity for the guest to promote their career or plug a film, book or other merchandise. An interesting person would simply be invited on TV because they were interesting.
By the late 1980s, that kind of interview was being replaced by a more elaborate entertainment format, particularly with the introduction in 1987 of The Last Resort, Jonathan Ross's UK version of American late-night talk shows such as those hosted by David Letterman. The guests became part of a larger entertainment package: opening monologue, comedy, interview, film clip, musical performance and so on. There is nothing wrong with that format, but it changed the nature of the interview. The conversation was no longer necessarily the programme: it was one part of the programme.
Then YouTube quite unexpectedly brought the long-form interview back. A YouTube interviewer can talk to an actor, musician, writer, historian or other interesting person for an hour or more. The conversation itself is the entertainment. In that sense, something like the old Parkinson or Cavett interview has returned, though not on TV, but on a platform that can be watched on TV.
YouTube is also an enormous TV archive. For decades, TV was an ephemeral medium. Programmes appeared, were watched and then disappeared. If you missed something, you might never see it again. Now, if you have a Smart TV, you can sit in your living room and watch TV from fifty or sixty years ago.
This is very different from channel-hopping through twenty or thirty modern channels and discovering that several of them are showing identical programme titles.
It is ironic that the technology that was supposed to replace traditional TV has, in some ways, brought it back. The difference is that a TV company hasn’t prepared the evening's schedule for you.
